The fifth volume of Harry Turtledove’s loosely
connected juvenile Crosstime Traffic series, The Gladiator differs
from earlier books in series in that his two main characters both come
from the visited timeline rather than the home timeline. Gianfranco
Mazilli and Annarita Crosetti are students at
Enver
Hoxha
Polytechnic
Academy
in
Milan
. Although they normally wouldn’t seem like kids who would hang
out, the fact that their families share a kitchen and bathroom mean that
they are forced into proximity and have formed a friendship.
In a world in which the Soviet Union succeeded and
Communism is a worldwide political model, Gianfranco is a sixteen year old
boy who is only average in school, but excels at playing the game “Rails
across Europe” at a local game store, The Gladiator. Annarita is a
year his senior and excels at school, with her main extracurricular outlet
being meetings of the local chapter of the Young Socialists’ League.
Their activities mesh when Annarita finds herself on a committee to
investigate possible subversive behavior at The Gladiator, and she warns
Gianfranco.
Once The Gladiator is raided and closed, the novel
really begins to take off. Annarita’s inspection of the store has
resulted in her committee giving it an official clean bill of health, an
action that opened Annarita up to questions from the other members of the
Young Socialists’ League. With nowhere else to get his fix of
“Rails across
Europe
,” Gianfranco appears at a loss, although he is able to rechannel his
energy into his schoolwork and teaching Annarita how to play the game.
Further complicating their lives is the appearance of Eduardo, one of the
clerks at The Gladiator, who shows up looking for a hiding place.
Eduardo, of course, was one of the agents of
Crosstime Traffic using The Gladiator to attempt to infiltrate new ideas
into Annarita and Gianfranco’s timeline. While in the past,
Turtledove has shown the Crosstime Traffic agents as traders, in this
case, they clearly worried about the timeline’s ability to get access to
their secret and were working to introduce subversive ideas under the
guise of selling “harmless” games. Once Eduardo, or rather the
Crosetti’s “Cousin Silvio” appears on the scene, the stakes are
heightened, with the threat of denunciation just around every corner.
While the characters feel they can confide in
Annarita’s father and mother, their difficulties are complicated by
Gianfranco’s father’s position as an apparatchik, a mid-level
bureaucrat for the local Communist party. While Mr. Mazzilli probably
wouldn’t do anything to harm his son directly, his attitude towards
Eduardo or the Crosettis can’t be counted on. Similarly, while
Annarita’s rivals in the Young Socialists’ League previously only had
a tenuous hold on her for questionable judgment, her involvement with the
fugitive Eduardo could easily get her sent to a camp.
While many of the earlier novels in the series have
dealt with teenage agents of Crosstime Traffic stranded in a strange
world, The Gladiator’s focus on local teenagers allows the give
this world even greater examination than in earlier books where only one
of the primary characters is a native. Gianfranco and Eduardo’s
conversations together, however, still allow Turtledove to include the
outsider’s point of view.
Both
Gianfranco and Annarita are likable characters. Although Turtledove
posits a potential villain in Annarita's rival in the Young
Socialists’ League,
Maria Tenace, the true conflict and tension is created simply by the
existence of the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist state which is all pervasive.
He does an excellent job in depicting a paranoid world where anyone can
turn out to be an enemy for any slight, real or imagined.
